


I'm Right Here

by CheerUpLovely



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Afterlife, Character Death, F/M, Plague
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-27
Updated: 2015-08-30
Packaged: 2018-04-17 14:05:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4669385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CheerUpLovely/pseuds/CheerUpLovely
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The city’s infected, it’s futile to pretend otherwise. There’s no cure. They weren’t fast enough. Those who survived are the ones who are long gone. Digg. Lyla. Baby Sara. Thea. They stayed behind to help with the evacuations. As if they could leave. They were on the last bus out, they agreed, and not before.</p><p>He’d begged her to go with Thea. She wouldn’t leave him.</p><p>And now it’s too late.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> From a prompt at tumblr by @sickandtwisteddoc

The city’s infected, it’s futile to pretend otherwise. There’s no cure. They weren’t fast enough. Those who survived are the ones who are long gone. Digg. Lyla. Baby Sara. Thea. They stayed behind to help with the evacuations. As if they could leave. They were on the last bus out, they agreed, and not before.

He’d begged her to go with Thea. She wouldn’t leave him.

And now it’s too late.

She’s on the border of the Glades. She’d tried to make it back to the old foundry before the second wave hit, but she didn’t make it and she’s already experiencing the numbness in her legs. He’s outside the Queen Incorporated building, sat against a pillar with his phone in his hand.

They’re wearing their comms unit but he can’t see her through that. On his phone is a whole album of pictures devoted to her, and if he stares at the one of her in the motel bed with her hair spread out and if he lies down on the stone tiles just right, its like she’s laying next to him with her shaky breaths in his ear.

He knows when he feels blood on his lips that he doesn’t have long.

“We’re not going to make it,” she whispers. It’s final. She doesn’t sound afraid.

“I love you,” he answers. It’s one thing he is sure of.

“Didn’t find a cure, didn’t get out of here safely…didn’t even manage to be on the same side of the city in the end…we’re failing a lot today, aren’t we?” she tries to laugh.

His head is spinning now. It’s like a hangover creeping up on him. “At least we’re in the same time zone,” he agrees. He bites his words back at first, but then why? Why is he? This is the last time he’s ever going to get to speak to her. “At least we can hear each other’s voices?”

She goes silent for a few moments. “Are you looking at road trip photos too, or am I the only pathetic dying person?” she asks.

“No, I’m on Montana,” he says, his thumb the only thing that moves as he flicks through the photos. “You?”

“Arizona.”

His eyes close for a moment, a ghost of a smile crossing his lips. “Arizona was good,” he remembers. “I loved Arizona.”

“You loved the beach.”

“I loved you on the beach,” he recalls with a softness to his voice. “That white dress, your hair in the wind…that smile…your laugh…” That’s how he’s going to remember her in this moment. The thought of her across the city with blood on her lips and the light in her eyes slowly fading is too much for him. He fears it’ll kill him quicker and he’ll miss out on this last talk with her. So he’s going to look at her picture and listen to her voice and cling to this little piece of humanity she has given him.

“I got a better picture for you than that,” she says quietly.

She’s quiet, but his phone soon alerts with a new picture message received. He opens it, and all breath leaves his body for a moment.

He hopes it’s not a symptom.

She’s wearing a white dress of another kind. The photo isn’t the best quality because he assumes Thea took it based on the shadow in the mirror behind Felicity. God, that smile, he’s never seen anything like it. That’s the smile of his future, the one he won’t get now. That’s the smile he was going to grow old with, the smile that was going to tease him about grey hair in his stubble and wrinkles from actual smiles she was going to make him have.

This is his fiancee trying on her wedding dress for the ceremony they won’t be having in June.

“So? What’s the verdict?” she asks, breaking him out of his thoughts.

“Beautiful,” he murmurs, leaving the tear on his cheek in case it’s the last thing he ever feels because the numbness is starting now. “Digg’s right, I definitely would have cried.”

“You can’t cry, it’ll make me cry,” she tells him, and suddenly it’s not about the dress.

“Okay,” he says, taking a more ragged breath that ends in a cough.

Her voice isn’t softer, it’s weaker.

“Are you scared?” he asks her.

“A little.”

“Don’t be, I’m right here. We’re going to do this together.”

“How is going to happen?” she asks him. “I saw people coughing blood, I didn’t see anyone…die,” she whispers.

Oliver feels sick when he tells her. That’s a symptom, definitely. Nausea. “Our bodies will start to shut down once they go numb,” he says, because why lie to her now? Her breath hitches, and he knows her numbness has long since started. “It hits the brain first, I think. I don’t think we’ll know that it happens. A lot of people just closed their eyes and went to sleep before it happened.”

“Should we do that?” she asks in a tiny voice.

Maybe if they were together.

Maybe if they could lie down together and hold each other.

Maybe if they weren’t apart. They could lie there, kiss each other one last time, curl up in each others arms and go to sleep.

“Do you want to?” he asks her, biting at his lip because he’ll sacrifice these last few minutes with her voice if she wants to go more peacefully. Even now, he’ll do anything for her.

“I want to be with you,” she replies.

His heart breaks. “I’m sorry I didn’t make it.”

“I’m sorry I said we should stay.”

“I’m sorry I agreed.”

His vision starts to blur around the edges and he hears a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the comms. “Oliver…”

“Your eyes?” he whispers.

“Yeah,” she says, fear in her tone. He can hear each tremble, each waver, he tries to replace it with a nicer memory but everything is suddenly feeling so far away and it’s just them, just her voice in his ear as everything starts to fade away.

“Mine too,” he tells her, coughing again as he really does lay down on the ground this time, more slumping than graceful but he does manage to catch himself before slamming into the concrete too hard, one arm stretched out as if it were looped around her. “It’s just like when you went to Gotham and you taught me Skype,” he tells her. “Lie down with me.”

“I am,” she whispers, without hearing the rustle of movement, and he knows then she’s been curled on her side for a while.

“Good,” he breathes, struggling to find the energy to raise his voice any more. Not that it mattered. He was all for her. Every last part of him. He propped his phone up and put it on speakerphone with the last meaningful use of his hand, so he can hear her voice and stare at her picture through half-lidded eyes. “Are you tired?”

“So tired,” she whispers, though it’s not peaceful, her breathing is laboured. His isn’t. He’s going to be one of the lucky ones, who passes quickly without trauma to the lungs. Hers is more progressed, she was closer to the wave, and her lungs are starting to fail.

“That’s okay, me too,” he tells her, the tears on his cheeks ever present even though he can’t feel them. “Felicity?”

“Yeah, Oliver?”

“Thank you for being my happy story,” he whispers. “For being my light.”

“Thank you for letting me,” she replies weakly. “I love you.”

Her picture starts to fade before him and he swallows thickly, gulping back bile and God knows what else. This is it, he thinks, as darkness clouds over her bright pink lips that smile and that light in her eyes. This is the last thing he’ll ever see. He’s glad it’s her.

“I can’t see any more,” he whispers in a pained confession.

“Your eyes are closed,” she wheezes back. “We’re going to bed.”

“Yeah,” he replies tightly. He has died before. He has felt this cold before and he knows they are not going to bed. Bed is warm. Bed is her hair beneath his nose, moving with his breaths. Bed is skin on skin. Bed is warm. Bed is warm. Bed is… “I love you,” he tells her. He has to. Once more. “I love you so much. I always did.”

“I will always love you,” she gasps back.

Their always is going to last under two minutes. He knows.

“Let’s go to sleep,” he suggests, knowing he has to make this easier for her. As much as he wants her beside him, she’s alone and she’s scared and he doesn’t want her to die in pain. If she has to go, she needs to go peacefully. Please, God, don’t make her suffer anymore, she’s a good person, she’s a beautiful, wholesome, happy person and she deserves nothing less than peace.

“I’m scared to sleep,” she confessed.

“I’m right here,” he reminds her. “I’m right here, Felicity.”

“I want to be with you,” she whispers.

“I’m always with you,” he says, and it frightens him that he can’t feel his lips moving.

He hears her breathing, hears her breathing, hears her breathing…it’s soothing. It’s peaceful. It’s like a lullabye that draws him in. It’s like Sunday mornings with a hangover, that’s all.. it’s just her breathing, breathing, softly, softly…

“Felicity?”

Her reply is a gentle sound.

He won’t hear her speak again.

Then there’s nothing more to say. He had time to say goodbye, he knows that’s more than he deserves, that this is far less than she deserves. She’s barely hearing him. She’s in pain. She’s falling asleep to the sound of his voice and maybe that will make the next minute a little more bearable. Maybe she won’t even feel it.

“Felicity?” he tries again, his voice filled with hope. Please, he just wants to hear her voice one more time. Please…

There’s nothing. He can’t hear anything. Not even her breathing. There’s nothing.

Nothing more to say, as he closes his eyes and waits for death to take him too.

Except one thing.

“Sleep tight.”


	2. Eternal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> missmudpie said: Listen, Satan: Between dying over the comms and the beheading you have killed Oliver and Felicity enough times. To fix it, I purpose this prompt: Olicity finds each other in the afterlife. Can be pseudo-sequel to one you’ve written or not.
> 
> Anonymous said: please fix that last fic you wrote. Maybe it could all be just a dream. FIX IT.
> 
> Note: Okay, it’s a fix-it. I had to. I couldn’t just let them die like that. WHY DO YOU GUYS KEEP PROMPTING ME DEATH? HAVEN’T YOU LEARNED BY NOW THAT I WILL WRITE IT?

Oliver feels things returning to himself slowly. First there’s a tingle deep in his muscles, as if the blood is rushing back to his feet after he’s been crouched for too long. It’s that feeling of a long, unplanned nap, and he finds himself wondering what day it is, what year it is, and where exactly did he fall asleep? He feels an ache through his body slowly become replaced with something more comfortable, and the tingle dulls to something he’s not entirely used to - peace.  
  
Then he remembers.  
  
It’s a Thursday in May. And he died.  
  
He’s dead. He was infected along with all those remaining in the city and he died. He sat outside Queen Incorporated and felt his body shutting down while he clung to those final moments with…  
  
…Felicity.

His eyes snap open quickly, and he tries to get his bearings. He’s not lying down but seated in a chair in a pastel-coloured room. It’s soft, somewhat blurred around the edges, and then he realises what this means. He’s unharmed. He’s not in a hospital. He’s not sick. He’s…okay. He’s dead. He knows that. He always knew there was a place between life and death, he’s browsed it before, seen something ahead of him in a shimmer of tranquillity, but a name has always pulled him back, a face, a pair of lips, a voice.   
  
Felicity.  
  
She must be here now, he realises. In the last moments before closing his eyes he remembers hearing her fade. He has to find her. He stands up, but a door at his side opens and in walks his best friend.  
  
His old best friend.

“Tommy…” he murmurs, as the smiling man came closer. He draws in a breath and Tommy just smiles at him, hands tucked into the pockets of a very expensive looking suit.  
  
“About time you joined us,” Tommy remarks casually. “There’s a lot to get to and a lot of people waiting for you, but I’m here to do the welcome party,” he explains. Oliver just stares at him, and despite the realities in his mind right now, all he wants to do is embrace his best friend. Before he can, however, Tommy gives a slight nod of his head. “So, you’ve figured it out?”

“I’m dead,” Oliver says, for the first time out loud. This isn’t so different. He doesn’t feel any different to being alive.

“Right on the nail,” Tommy winks at him. “It’s pretty much how they say it is. Everyone in your family you’ve known and lost is here to meet you.”

“So you found-”

“Yeah, my mom was my welcome party,” Tommy nods. “Your mom’s just outside, you’ll see why. Your Dad too. They’re actually getting on quite well, without the need for evil deeds around here. Everyone’s happy here.”

Something sinks in his stomach. He didn’t think he’d ever feel that again. It must have shown on his face because then Tommy is giving him a knowing smile again. “Don’t worry, buddy, she’s here. Her grandparents met her, then she came here to find you,” he explains. “She looks beautiful.”

“Of course she does,” he breathes a sigh of relief. “Is she-”

Tommy cuts him off with a small laugh. “Oliver, haven’t you figured it out yet?”

“Figured what out?”

“Oh, there you are.” He turns at the sound of her voice. His mother’s voice. His heart is suddenly heavy in ways he never imagined for her, for his mom, and he feels like a ten year old boy when she comes over and embraces him. “My beautiful boy,” she breathes as she draws him into his arms.

“Hi, mom,” he replies in a tight voice.

He wants to say so much. He wants to tell her that he’s sorry for what happened to her, that he misses her, that Thea misses her, and Thea’s okay she’s safe and she made it out of the city but–

“Tommy Merlyn, you’re late,” Moira chides him.

Tommy’s eyebrows shoot up. “He took longer to wake up. He was searching.”

“Well the person he’s searching for is already here,” Moira told him, and her hands come up to Oliver’s face. “And she looks beautiful.”

“I just want to see her,” Oliver murmurs. “Right before, we-”

“We know,” Moira nodded to him. “We were with you, and her family was with her. Waiting. Neither of you were ever alone, Oliver.”

That makes him feel better, to know that while they were feeling their bodies slip away they were never alone. But still, she is here, and he wants her. “I want to see her,” he repeats.

“In just a moment,” Moira tells him. “We just need to make sure you’re ready first.”

“I’m always ready to see her.”

“It’s a bit more than that, Oliver,” Tommy tells him. “We’ve been watching you guys for a while, keeping track is kinda a hobby of ours around here, and let’s face it, you guys are like watching a drama series. You two are basically celebrities around here.” A look from Moira cuts him off and he dips his head before continuing. “We know what you two were planning to do and we’ve made certain arrangements.”

“Arrangements?” Oliver questions with a small frown.

“For your marriage,” Moira explains. Oliver feels the breath knocked out of him, so she continues. “Yes, that all counts around here. You both died thinking of each other, wanting to be with one another, and that can happen here,” she assures him, sharing more of a smile with Tommy this time. “Now, if you’re ready to finally make a commitment to a good woman,” she begins and Oliver smiles, looking down at his feet, “then she’s just on the other side of the door, waiting for you.”

“I’m ready,” he replies instantly, without needing to think.

He’s ready.

He’s ready for the love of his life to make an honest man out of him at long last.

They’ve waited long enough.

He’s lead through the door by his mother and best friend, and there she is. Beautiful. Radiant. Eternal. She exists here only for him, despite the people standing around her. He recognises the dress she’s wearing as the one in that final picture he looked at, and what he’d thought would be the last time he ever looked up on her face becomes the first.

She’s smiling, her hair down around that beautiful white gown, and he doesn’t look at anyone else but her. In this bizarre twist of fate, he is walking down an aisle towards her, and she’s waiting for him with that smile she always saves for him.

He reaches her and takes her hand. They’re solid. They’re real. He’s touching her with purpose and whichever one of them has tears is irrelevant. From her hands, he brings her into his arms, and holds her there, pressed against him like he thought he’d never get to do again and she clings to him.

“I thought I’d never see you again,” he whispers into her hair. “I’m so sorry that you were alone, I’m so sorry I wasn’t with you.”

“We were never alone,” she replies into that gap between his neck and his shoulder. “I gotta say, Queen, when you say you want to be with a girl forever you really go above and beyond to make that happen,” she tries for a joke, but his reply is just a breath. “We’re here now,” she whispers. “We’re together now.”

“We’re together,” he repeats, and draws back so he can see her face, cup her cheek, kiss her lips. “So…we should do this, then,” he nods.

“It’d be a shame to waste the dress,” she agrees just as casually, and he can only smile at her, filled with a warm sense of satisfaction and excitement despite the fact that his heart no longer pounds in his chest.

“Forever,” he whispers to her.

“Forever,” she agrees, taking hold of his hand.

Sometimes you fight death, he realises as he takes this beautiful woman to be his wife. Sometimes death fights for you. But he knows know what he’d been fighting for every time he survived. It wasn’t his time before. Dying for her would never have been enough. It would never have brought either of them peace. But this…this is their peace.

Their bodies would be found, and they would be mourned, but their loved ones would be watched over, and when people watched them and hoped that they were together and at peace, they would smile at each other, hold each other a little closer, a little longer.

This was more than peace. This was eternity.


End file.
